“You’ll have to keep practicing somehow while you are on your diplomatic missions,” She declared. “But I don’t want to send you on your way with only one spell, incomplete though it may be. Today you learn Lightning Jolt and Frost Impact. Frost Impact should be the simplest so let’s begin with that.”
She led me to my spot, deployed the targets then took her spellcasting stance in her own rune circle.
She brought up her arms, one behind her elbow bent, fist clenched. Her other arm was extended in front of her, straight with her hand open, palm pointed forward.
“Rafror!” She declared, bringing her fist forward.
As her fist reached the apex of the strike, a blue-white nimbus flared around her hand and then shot across the room, splashing on the target like a flame, but leaving frost in its wake instead of burn marks.
She guided me into the stance, which was simple enough.
“Now, Cold energy is delicate. You cannot simply mix it with your will as you do with fire, for it is a polar opposite. Like Positive and negative energies. You must only merge them at the final moment.” Narusil explained.
“Wait, cold ‘energy’? Cold isn’t an energy, it is an absence of heat.” I stated in confusion.
She looked at me in bewilderment. “Who taught you such nonsense?”
I was taken aback.
“All things are energy. Earth, wind, fire, ice, sound, lightning. For each energy, there is a reverse energy, with fire and ice being most common and easily understood.” Narusil countered.
“In one hand, I hold the flame, the energy of heat.” Narusil declared, lifting a hand and commanding, “Amarihafra.”
A ball of flame appeared, hovering above her hand.
“In the other, I hold Racal, the energy of cold.” She declared, lifting her other hand, “Amarira.”
A matching blue-white ball of… what looked similar to fire, but instead of the flames flickering up like a normal fire, they flickered down, seeming to hit a barrier above her hand and spreading every direction above her hand, though not reaching far before they disappeared.
“So… like an anti-fire? A cold flame?” I tried to wrap my head around the idea. It broke every rule of physics I knew.
Well, that wasn’t quite true. It was like… Matter and Antimatter. Anti-matter existed, or so I was given to believe, and it was just that negative matter. So if Antimatter existed… why couldn’t anti-fire?
“Anti-fire? Either the translation is strange indeed or your words are… peculiar. I suppose so long as it allows you to think of the energy properly, I don’t think it matters what you call it.” Narusil laughed.
She made a swirling, closing motion with her hands and the flame and anti-flame disappeared.
“To cast this spell, think of the most… anti-fire… thing you can. If the concept is hard for you, perhaps it is best if you do not worry about overdoing this. We are in a place of safety after all. So imagine the anti-fire in your fist. And imagine the force of your will in your forward hand. Then, as you bring your fist forward, speak the word ‘Rafror’ and combine them at the last moment as your fist reaches your outstretched hand. You must do this while aiming as well.” Narusil instructed.
Damn… this was not going to be easy.
At least she was right, my Ember Bolt had been pretty blown out of proportion a few times and the wards had kept it contained, so I shouldn’t have to worry about anything.
I took the stance again and tried to imagine the idea of ‘anti-fire’, like the blue flames she had conjured. I thought of a lecture one of the engineers had given me about why the idea of antimatter should worry me, and how destructive it could be. I thought of how fucking cold liquid nitrogen was. My brain tried to mix those ideas together and I hoped I had it at least somewhat right.
I was getting better at imagining my will, and I picked out my target.
Well, here goes nothing.
“Rafror!” I yelled like some Dragonball Z character or something, cause I felt cartoon as fuck with this stance.
I splashed the will in, just at the last second, and hoped anything would happen.
It didn’t.
“It seems your idea of anti-fire wasn’t steady enough,” Narusil noted. “Try again.”
Wasn’t firm enough? Okay, I imagined a glacier, dry ice, the smoky coldness.
I took my stance and tried again. Fearing I hadn’t pushed my will hard enough, I really pushed it.
The next thing I knew I was lying on my back, my right arm tingling and I couldn’t feel my fingers.
“MASTER!” Narusil screamed, and the two elves present ran to my side.
My hand was coated in a frosty substance. I sat up and the target I had aimed at was in the middle of what looked like a frost explosion.
“Is he injured?” Amura demanded.
“No, he seems okay, just unprepared for… whatever that was.” She noted.
The frosty substance was quickly turning to steam off my hand. After just seconds I could move my fingers again and worked them back to feeling.
“By Y-…. By X’Thallion, is that what his spell did?” Amura gaped, looking at the spiky pillar of ice.
“Yes… I just wasn’t expecting this reaction.” Narusil noted. “Let’s work on moderating that so you don’t end up on your ass every time you cast this spell.”
It took a few minutes for my hand to fully defrost.
“Let’s try that again,” Narusil suggested, and Amura fled back to the entryway where she was behind the protection of the runes.
“Alright,” I noted.
Less cold and less will. I tried again. I took my stance. Imagining ice cubes and performing the casting.
This time, I was able to maintain my feet, knowing to brace, though the spell was still significantly more powerful than Narusil’s had been, and I had a touch of frost on my hand after the spell went off, but the burst of ice on the target was much more reasonable as well.
“Much better, we’ll get a few more successful… enough… casts of Frost Impact, then we’ll do Lightning Jolt.” Narusil declared. “Now, for most, the chill of casting the spell doesn’t do much, but they don’t have to protect their hand. You, however, cast with such overwhelming power that you must consider the rebound of the magic. Since it is your spell, perhaps it may be simple…”
She thought for a moment. “When splashing your will into the ice, imagine it wrapping around your hand. This may be all that is required.”
That was harder than you’d think. It was a split second and concentrating on wrapping the will around my hand made concentrating on everything else harder. It took me about six tries before I managed to get off the Frost Impact spell again, but with the will wrapping around my hand, the frost didn’t affect me at all.
Once I’d worked it out, three of my next four spells went off without a hitch, though one did fail.
“That will have to suffice.” Narusil declared. “Let’s move on to Lightning Jolt.”
She took a wide stance. She started with both hands together, her two middle fingers curled to her palms, and her pointers, pinkies, and thumbs touching the matching finger on the opposite hand, spread wide. She raised her right elbow and pulled her hands apart, pushing her left hand forward as she pulled her right hand back like she was aiming a slingshot. Her forward hand was shifted to be palm and her fingers forward toward her target, with her back hand pointing the same way.
“Likra saif! “Narusil barked, her backhand twisting like breaking the line between her hands.
An arc of lightning snapped from her forward hand to the target, leaving a small scorch mark that disappeared after a few moments. For the general level of precision, I’d seen from Narusil, it was surprisingly nowhere near the center.
I’d learned that these were ‘self-healing’ targets, like some I had used back home, except instead of simply being a spongy substance that would minimize the harm done, it actually reverted to its previous state of being. The fact that I had managed to actually destroy two of them by accident with my Ember Bolt spell had been a source of amazement and grumpiness on Narusil’s part.
“Lightning is a temperamental element. Difficult to aim with any degree of accuracy, but potent when you land a hit.” Narusil noted. “Lightning is a dynamic force, present in all things. Instead of imagining lighting as a concept, and then adding your will to it, you must imagine your will as a hand, gripping the lightning energy in the air before you, and pulling it apart as you spread your hands. Then, as you utter the words of magic, ‘Likra saif’ you must prepare for the lightning to attempt to return to its original location, and beyond, based on the amount of force with which you willed it apart. Too little force and the jolt will not reach its intended target, too much and it will likely not arch around your target.”
This made sense to me, you were effectively pulling electrons off of a patch of air, making it positively charged, and pushing it away, while pulling back the electrons in a negatively charged patch. It only made sense to me, based on what I’d seen when Narusil released the spell, that the electrons were actually held at your front hand, no matter what you imagined and the action was simply controlling where the positive charge was.
Or at least I hope that was what happened. Otherwise, I was really misunderstanding things here. Of course, I was assuming physics was even the same in this universe. Magic was a thing here, so who knew if electrons, protons, and shit were even a thing here.